


Isle of Dogs

by Astroplants



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Marley Arc (Shingeki no Kyojin), Sexual Content, Suicide Mentions (TW), Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:53:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29810778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astroplants/pseuds/Astroplants
Summary: His voice is unnervingly soft, coloured at the sides with acerbic venom. "We're the last rats standing baby, haven't you figured it out yet?"And Reiner can only stare into those flat, dead eyes and wonder what in God's name is wrong with him if he's glad to see Eren.(Reiner and Eren: animal to animal)
Relationships: Reiner Braun/Eren Yeager
Comments: 14
Kudos: 113





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I've been revisiting old fandoms from when I was fourteen and now I have SnK brain rot. I blame @DoubleDumbo entirely for my new love of EreRei, particularly [this](https://twitter.com/ThisUserIsAngry/status/1358544323025977344/photo/1) post of theirs. Also, a small PSA: I'm an anime only watcher so apologies to those further ahead for any plot discrepancies with the manga, particularly regarding the minutiae of Zeke and Eren's plan. This work is being beta'd by the lovely [ raisuki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthegripofahurricane/pseuds/raisuki). Go check out their fics because their talent is just *chefs kiss*.
> 
> Sidenote: everyone please go listen to Pearl Diver by Mitksi it's such a perfect song for Eren.

**_Those creatures of your working mind, don't fear them or their hunger  
Forgive the sea, follow the tide, with the monsters on your shoulder._ **

_He’s thirteen and learning how to fly, watching Mikasa soar between the trees with an easy elegance. She looks as though she’s been handling ODM gear all her life, easy and unruffled. Sasha pulls a branch back, watching it thump into Connie’s leg with unbridled glee and Connie yells and swoops after her, disappearing into the thick of the trees. Annie moves with precision up in the canopy whilst Bertholdt swings a little below, shifting his weight easily between the heavy gear strapped to his hips. Krista flits between branches, unsure of her strength as Ymir follows closely beside; all of his comrades, wheeling and gliding above him, flashes of silver between the leaves._

_Yet Eren can’t seem to lift his feet from where he stands._

_“Yeager! I want to see you in air before I have to kick your skinny behind off that tree!” Shadis yells from a thick branch several trees behind where Eren is frozen, watching the cadets’ progress with an ever-austere gaze._

_His breathing gets heavy, sweat beginning to pool at his clavicles. All he can see as he stares down from his perch is his mother being lifted up, up, up and into the grin of the titan. The worst thing about it wasn’t the sight, surprisingly, but the sound. He hears her short, agonised gasps and the grinding crunch of her bones between the susurrus of the leaves. This strange box strapped to his side isn’t going to save him from between the jaws of a titan and he’s going to die, die, die and oh-_

_There’s a metallic, thunking sound as a wire zips past and into the thick bark of the trunk beside him. A rush of displaced air ruffles his fringe and he turns to the side, eyes wide and glassy. It’s Reiner, big and broad and collected in all the places that Eren is wiry and small and angry. His brow is heavy with tension as he stares down. “Eren, I don’t know where your mind is right now, but I need you to move.” Reiner’s voice is soft and full of command, but it’s not enough to stop the titan eating his mother over and over and over, all around the tree._

_A large hand descends on his shoulder, anchoring him. “Eren!” Reiner's voice is sharper this time, twisting Eren around to look into his eyes. Shadis is watching them._

_“My mother, Reiner it’s eating her and I can’t save her I can’t, I can’t-”_

_A thumb hooks under his chin and pinches tight, squeezing until his jaw begins to ache. “You are a soldier, Eren Yeager. You’re here to prove that you are worth something. You’re here to look those titans dead in the eye and show them you will not run. But you can never do that if you don’t jump from this tree, do you understand?”_

_Eren looks up, tears beading at the corners of his eyes and nods, gasping. “No one can make this choice for you, but I know you, Eren. You fight, so jump.” Reiner lets his chin go and moves to free his grapples. “Wait” Reiner looks back, hand hovering by the release mechanism, “I know… I know I have to do this. I have to do this so I can kill them.” Eren sets his jaw, feeling the familiar righteous fire unspool in his stomach. He locks eyes with the older boy, “I have to do this, or I’m not a warrior.”_

_Something indecipherable flares in Reiner’s eyes and he turns sharply, drawing his blades from the gear. His hand shakes, barely. “Good” His feet brace, ready to spring, “Now jump.”_

-

Marley, as it turns out, smells rancid. The air is hot and thick with smog from the great blips that hang in the sky and the strange, whizzing automobiles that scatter the streets. A film of grime and soot shadows the bricks of the squat uniform buildings. Around the port where he walks, the stench of fish is heady. It doesn’t have the hot, unpleasant stink of sewage as Shinganshina did on particularly warm summer nights. This much Eren is willing to say for this strange, cruel nation.

The crowd heaves and flows before him, as he limps down the promenade. Eren’s still getting used to shifting his weight on one side, even if it’s only temporary. Removing his leg had been a rather bloody and inconvenient necessity, he’d had to hack at it on the grassy dunes just short of the beach at Paradis. The sword of his old ODM gear had hit the flesh wetly as he let out small, aborted gasps. That was the funny thing about pain, you could never quite acclimatise. A breathless terror had filled him as he imagined the military police stationed around the port discovering him, following his moans and to find him a quaking, pained mess among the sand dunes. There had been a lot of blood staining the sand, congealing between the tall blades of grass. But what was a little more blood in his life, there was already so much. Too much.

From there, travelling into the Mid-Eastern front had been surprisingly easy, but then again, no one notices another soldier in a warzone. He was surprised when he arrived to find himself unused to war. At least war like this, in trenches and between bullets. Men were dying in droves knowing someone across the barbed wire had pulled the trigger, rather than being cut down by some mindless titan’s hand. There was something senseless in it, until he acclimatised.

Slipping into a corps of wounded soldiers heading straight for Liberio hadn’t proved a challenge either. There had been something faintly unnerving to Eren in finding the Marleyan soldiers broken and shellshocked in the emergency transport wagon. Somehow, he’d expected them to be spitting and full of fire as he had once been. There had to be some essential vitriol within them to push them to make war after war. It was naive to expect such a neat moral equation, to step onto new soil and find his enemy to be a monster. After all, propaganda never rings true on a battle front.

Eren had turned to Commander Magath, then, the man at the top. He held himself stiff, not easy with his soldiers in the way that Erwin had been but he burns with the same essential belief in his duty. No other cause could be right, not in Theo Magath’s eyes. There were Devils and Marleyans. Friend and foe. Essential and expendable. It’s a funny way to view human life, really. Yet it’s a standpoint Eren has absorbed more of than he’d like to admit.

It takes a few strides to shake himself back into the present, forcing his gaze outward, towards the harbour and planning his strike. A girl on the boardwalk stares up at his crutch and gaunt face without guile as he passes. After a moment, she smiles. Eren smiles thinly back and reminds himself that these people will soon be dead, children or not. And he’ll be the one landing the blow. 

He has made himself hard, oh so very, very hard. There is no softness left in him now. The magma inside him has cooled to a solid, collected shell. So many of his friends have died meaningless, empty deaths. He has watched men grasped from galloping horses screaming and women snatched from the air as they tried to twist away from a titan’s grasp. His people will no longer cower, and he will no longer hide. He will be Marley’s monster, if they wish, but he _will_ be free.

 _Focus on the task at hand, Eren,_ Grisha’s voice whispers in the back of his head. This pulls a sour little smile onto his face as he weaves towards the Internment Zone. Alas, if he is anyone’s monster, he is his father’s. Does Zeke feel the same? Perhaps. Then again, Grisha didn’t shove the north star down Zeke’s throat and expect him to carry the power of the founding titan.

Those last moments with his father come to him often in fragments, unbidden. Grisha holds his face so softly and his hand shakes as he plunges the needle into Eren’s arm. He reaches up to hold his father’s face as bones begin to shift and reshape under the skin. _I love you, Eren_ , he remembers that, clear as a bell, right before everything fades into distorted blackness.

He often pictures meeting Zeke properly, too. Come to think of it, he’s not even had a proper conversation with his brother, let alone when either of them have had all their limbs attached. That generates a small, hysterical bubble of laughter in his throat as he limps down the increasingly ramshackle streets. There’s something so utterly ridiculous about his life, when he bothers to take a step back. What would he have been, if Grisha hadn’t made him this? A subpar scout, probably. Perhaps he’d even be dead, another body under a green cloak. _Wings of Freedom_ , eh? He’d believed so fervently in them, back when the fight had seemed so simple. But the central fact was clear now, after all these years: to be Eldian is to be a rat in cage, be it on Paradis or here in Marley.

He’s coming up on the gate now, to the place where this armband won’t mark him as other. That’s good, the less he’s seen, the better. _Be as grey as the stone around you, my boy._ Whatever hell Grisha went to, Eren hopes it’s worse than this sandstone cesspit.

The titan warriors will be back in a few days, it’s plastered all over the Libero broadsheets in strange, bold print. There’re odd, grainy pictures too. _Photographs,_ that’s what Grisha had called them. The beast titan looms large in one, a great hulking shape facing a fort. Eren stops outside a small newsagent just shy of the gate to take a closer look at the loud headlines and there, in one proclaiming to be the ‘Marleyan voice’ in thick black font, he sees it. The picture is awful, blurry and unfocused but there’s no mistaking the solid shape and jagged angles of the titan form, it’s Reiner. _The Armoured Titan,_ the caption reads, _was badly damaged in the siege against the Mid-East Allied Forces but Deputy Chief Braun remained strong, defeating the cunning machinery of the enemy and bringing glorious victory to the Marleyan Empire._ Eren picks the newspaper up, crumpling the sides with how hard he’s clutching it because it’s him, it’s him, it’s him. Reiner has been thrumming in his head for four years since Zeke took his mangled body back home, licking his wounds and suddenly he’s there in front of Eren’s eyes, bold as brass.

“You need to buy it.”

It’s the squat man behind the counter of the news kiosk speaking, staring at Eren with heavy eyes. He’s puffing at a cigarillo and the smoke that comes from his mouth is acrid and unfamiliar. A sonorous lilt colours his voice in a way that reminds Eren of Reiner. It’s a current that sings through all the Marleyan accents and he can hear the deep thrum of Reiner’s laugh in every single one.

“What?” Eren’s voice comes out with a croak, having barely said a word since he’d slipped quietly out from the bounds of the military hospital. The man nods to the paper in his hands, gaze veiled by a haze of blue smoke.

“The paper, son, you need to buy it if you want to read it.”

It’s such a bizarrely normal interaction. There’s nothing this man actually wants from him beyond his money and to see the back of him. He’s so used to moving between the words of a conversation to look four moves ahead that he’s forgotten what it’s like to simply speak without pause.

Eren’s voice is quiet as he speaks, measured and blank “Of course, sorry.” He fishes for the Marleyan coins in his coat, the few he’d been able to slip from the pockets of the amblers on the wharf. He’s stolen them from passers-by in the same way he did as a child. He almost smiles at the thought of Armin scolding him for it and a none too gentle arm punch from Mikasa. Shiganshinan habits die hard, but it’s nice to know at least some things don’t change.

He walks away, passing without comment through the gate with the paper under his arm, the bland gaze of the guards sliding over him. The picture of Reiner feels like it’s burning into his skin. _Reiner, Reiner, Reiner._ Suddenly, he’s fifteen again and staring up at a boy so broad and strong that Eren’s convinced he can carry the world on his shoulders. Memories of the way he would swirl and spin in the air with such power and precision draw weak butterflies up in his stomach that he thought were long dead.

Tightening his hand on his crutch, Eren limps along faster. _Never forget you’re on opposite sides of the chessboard, my boy,_ Grisha intones, honey soft at the back of his skull, _when the king bows, he loses the game._ If he can just get back to the hospital, he’ll be fine, and he won’t feel he _won’t-_

There’s tears staining the bandage over his eye.

How is this happening? He doesn’t _feel_ anything anymore, he made sure he wouldn’t feel. Eren can’t do this if he gets emotional. But there’s Reiner, swimming before his eyes. His soldierbrotherenemyloverking.

He must get off the main thoroughfare, now, before he starts crying in earnest. Swerving towards a side alley, he stumbles, losing the balance between his left leg and the crutch. The tears begin to come thick and fast before he hits the floor. All control is gone now, as his imagination careens around images of Reiner. They’re in the Survey Corps stable, trading easy banter about Captain Levi’s frigid attitude. They’re in training together and Eren can’t decide whether he wants Reiner’s skill with an ODM blade or if he simply wants to kiss him. They’re atop the wall and Reiner’s revealing who he really is between strands of crackling yellow lightning, watching Eren’s heart break in real time.

It’s embarrassing really, the way he’s hung up on a teenage crush. They’re in the middle of a war and he’s still thinking about how he should’ve kissed Reiner, back when it was still uncomplicated, when Reiner was still just the boy on the pedestal and Eren was the votive. The way he’d burned for him was almost frightening, back when he couldn’t do anything in moderation. Oh, the way he would have formed to any space, Reiner could’ve moulded him any which way he’d wanted and Eren would have bent, just to feel his hands.

But he’d shown the warrior he truly was, and the world had exploded outward in tiny, concentric shocks. Reiner had split in two for him, then. There was the boy he knew, dependable and in control and there was the boy in front of him, talking about duty and consequence whilst his wounded skin steamed together. It had been hard at first, configuring the two into one coherent picture, but Eren’s had four long years to think. Now he’s going to bring the carcass of their relationship right to Reiner’s doorstep, and a war too. Checkmate.

There’s a thrill in the thought of interrupting his life like this, breaking Libero the way Bertholdt broke Wall Maria. That’s the little boy in him speaking, he’ll concede, but it’s a part of himself Eren will never quite kill. For better or worse.

It’s all combat, moves and counter moves. Zeke’s the one with the grand pretentions, Eren wants a fight. Not in the same way he used to, all spitting animal, but something more surgical. Breaking the bone to reset it. _That’s it, son, focus on the battle. Soldiers don’t cry._

One deep, rattling breath, and Eren’s up. The tear tracks on his face are forgotten now, fingers bone white against the handle of the crutch. The military hospital, that’s where he’s got to go. It’s not a lie to say he needs to convalesce. Nineteen, and he’s so fucking tired. Perhaps that’s a virtue of living as a shifter, the years evaporate away in titan steam. Eren wonders if Reiner is as bone weary as him.

-

He returns, he recuperates, he plans. There’s no slipping out today, too risky. Security will be tight as troops and _glorious_ warriors march on home. A reckless part of him wants to join the crowd and watch them return, put a face to the shifters up close and personal. If he goes out there, he’ll see Zeke and his grandparents enfold each other with open arms and wonder what his place would’ve been, if he’d been born here. But if Reiner sees him too soon then the plan will be over before its begun. So, waiting in the dark, that’s where Eren will be.

He files out with the other wounded soldiers, carefully blank as he’s ordered into line. They’re examining credentials of the soldiers who returned earlier with the wounded, checking for unlawful avoidance of the ‘Eldian duty’ to fight. Zeke has nestled a ‘Kruger’ nice and neatly into the records, so Eren expects little resistance to his presence.

The men in line with him are hollowed out, their essential sense of self lost somewhere between artillery shells and gunfire. Victimhood colours the very stone, here. It’s not so different from life behind the walls. An undercurrent of desperation colours life for Eldians either side of the ocean.

The Marleyan officer profiling them has a wide, square face and his eyes betray a certain arrogant brutality. He’s building up to something, Eren can see it in the set of his shoulders. A broad and lazy grin spreads across his lips as he looks down the file and yells,

“Boom!”

Soldiers scatter, quaking and terrified. He's knocked down by the man behind him, elbow connecting solidly with the back of Eren's skull. It’s such a petty, malignant little act of cruelty that Eren could kill him. Eldian rats, Rats in a cage, wind them up and watch them go. The titan under his skin shifts and he could kill him, easy and simple, if he just-

“Excuse me, Sir…” There’s a boy standing above him, looking on with concern at abandoned crutch. “Do you need help?”

There’s something a little washed out about the child’s face. He has hair the colour of dry wheat and baleful brown eyes framed with long, cow’s eyelashes. He’s small, probably twelve at most. Armin, young and unsure, comes into Eren’s head unbidden and his image overlaps the boy in front of him. But, _oh,_ now this is interesting. There’s a yellow armband draped over his coat, cut through with the bright slash of a star. Just what he’s been looking for.

“I think I do,” a small smile wraps its way onto Eren’s face, shallow and sinister, “and I think you’re just the one to help me.”


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm going to make the chapters a little longer from here on out but do let me know what you think. I've got some content warnings to flag up before this chapter commences so please be aware that discussions of suicide, sexual coping mechanisms and (non-graphic) references to past child abuse are forthcoming (Reiner really needs whatever the Marleyan equivalent of therapy is). Many thanks to raisuki again for beta reading this!
> 
> As a point of interest, my descriptions of Marco in this chapter are heavily inspired by Francis Bacon's [Three Studies of the Human Head](https://www.wikiart.org/en/francis-bacon/three-studies-of-the-human-head-1953/). Bacon's art is well worth checking out in general it's wonderful stuff.

**_II._ **

**_Treasure hunter you are dead, the light of a world is fading  
You cannot see the other end, your body's lost all feeling._ **

_“Snow.”_

_Jean watches Bertholdt intensely, scrutinising the odd splay of his legs and almost delicate arch of his feet against the cabin wall._

_“That’s low hanging fruit, Kirstein.” Connie pads over to join him, slinging an arm easily around Jean’s shoulder, “Besides, you only have to look at what Krista and Ymir just hiked back though to say snow.” Jean scowls at this and Connie simply imitates him, pulling his lips into a contorted frown. Marco laughs heartily behind them, still wrapped in his parka to banish the biting chill that seeps through the thin glazing of the window._

_“Alright wise guy, what do you think it’s gonna be?” Jean grumbles, sweeping an arm towards Bertholdt’s bunk in a show of mock graciousness._

_“Tell us our fate, oh great and powerful oracle!” Marco calls out in ringmaster’s boom and Comnie’s quick on the uptake, capering towards Bertholdt with aggrandised seriousness._

_“We’ve got a classic sixty-five-degree head tilt here, cadets. Without a doubt, we’ll be seeing clearer skies and warmer weather to come, although the splay of his fingers here could indicate an upswing in windspeed-”_

_Jean punches him on the arm good naturedly and Connie cackles, pulling him into a tackle that Jean follows with a growing delight. Marco whoops them on from the bed, watching Jean pull Connie to the floor with a grin._

_Reiner watches this all with heavy lids from the bunk above Bertholdt. It’s all so easy for them: the banter, the friendship, the belonging. The atmosphere here is far less frigid than back on Marley, among the Warriors; here, relationships aren’t coloured by an essential sense of competition or undercut with a general self-loathing. A small, traitorous little part of him is far more content here in Paradis, where people look up to him and see him as capable. On Marley, the highest praise he was used to was Porco whispering in his ear, low and lilting, calling him Magath’s dog. If he’s not blisteringly loyal, he’s nothing; so what does that make him now?_

_He can’t sympathise with these people, on a practical level, he knows this. These filthy animals are devoid of the humanity that makes him a good Eldian. Their ancestors followed King Fritz behind the walls and left the world in rubble. They’re devils, they’re vermin, they’re-_

_“Reiner, Help!”_

_It’s Connie, squawking up at him as Jean tugs him into a headlock, thumping his fist against the bunk. Despite his best intentions, Reiner smiles. It’s a fleeting, genuine little thing that makes bile rise in the back of his throat._

_“No calling for backup Springer, admit defeat to your superiors.” Jean bites out with a grin, tightening his arm around Connie’s gullet which spurs a sharp thwack to the back of his head in retaliation. “Ow!”_

_Reiner shifts down from the bunk, landing solidly and conjures Marcel up from his gut, sliding with practiced ease into the role of dependable big brother. “Knock it off, both of you. A grip like that and you’ll kill him if you’re not careful, Jean.” And isn’t that ironic advice, because Reiner’s going to get everyone here killed, with all the precision in the world._

_Jean lets go at that, pricked up intuitively by the command. He feels a little sick at how implicitly they trust him, there’s no question over who he is, here. Fuck it, he’s got to move before he continues down this though track in earnest. “Thanks, man!” Connie calls after him, but Reiner is already turning into the anteroom, holding his jaw stiff so as not to cry._

_“Hey!” A voice follows him and Reiner swallows down the lump in his throat._

_“Connie, you’re welcome but I-” he gets a chest full of Eren Yeager as he turns around, as the boy characteristically charges forward like a blunt object._

_“Hey?” Reiner pulls himself back a little and Eren jolts away, a fuzzy flush of embarrassment colouring his cheeks._

_“Sorry, I-” he cuts himself off “Are you okay?”_

_A beat passes. Reiner doubts he has even the vaguest conception of how loaded that question is. Colour rises higher on Eren’s face in the silence._

_“You looked a little funny back there, is all.”_

_A little funny, well, that’s one way of putting it. Something hot and irrational flares in him because he decides that for this one moment, just this one, he’s going to be honest. Reiner allows his weight to pull him to the floor, sagging. “I’m just… scared I don’t have the means to achieve what I need to do.” The words are careful, yes, but they’re true._

_Eren slides down next to his and kicks softly against his shin, a rare and easy smile playing about his lips. He’s so painfully earnest, face constantly in flux with the emotions that slide across it. “I don’t think you could ever fail us, Reiner, especially not me.”_

_Ah right, that’s what this is about. Eren is oh so slowly nudging his fingers over Reiner’s, anxious admiration singing across his face. He lets himself entertain the thought of starting something with Eren, if only for a flash. A tickertape of angry little kisses and sweaty gropes caught in between training plays across his mind. It’d be nice, in many respects, nice to kiss a boy and pretend his life is defined by the same simplistic binaries and sense of camaraderie that shape Eren’s world. But Reiner would have to touch him knowing that he killed Eren’s mother with the very same hands, however indirectly, and it’s hard enough to maintain the façade without thinking about embracing a dead woman’s son._

_“Kid.” Reiner’s really gone and put his foot in it now, as Eren instantly snaps his hand back and holds it against his chest, burnt. He’s not that much older than Eren, really, just exponentially more haggard. Besides, Eren should get to be a child for just a little longer before Reiner tugs his world further apart._

_“It’s fine.” Eren says curtly, voiced touched with petulance in a way that tells Reiner it’s anything but. That same, absurd impulse pulls him again and he’s reaching out, catching at Eren’s itchy linen shirt as the boy turns to steam off. Eren looks up, then, face tinged with confusion and the lightest flurries of hope._

_“Just… ask me again in four years?” He goes weakly for humour, but it falls flat, he can’t carry the jovial tone through. Eren doesn’t seem to notice though – an excited fire begins to lick around the corner of his eyes as he steps towards Reiner’s chest again. Bold little shit._

_“Not a no?” A breathlessness catches on the last word, betraying just how terribly eager Eren is._

_Reiner puts a hand gently against Eren’s cheek, running his thumb back and forth where the first shadows of stubble are beginning to appear “Not a no.”_

_With that, he draws away, walking back to his bunk to contemplate just how dangerous it is to be soft._

-

Something gravelly plays on the gramophone in the corner of the office, scratching out a soft fox trot. The War Chief’s room is clean and sparse, small rural paintings and stacks of blandly titled books betraying nothing of Zeke’s personality. Reiner is thumbing the handle of his teacup with swift strokes at the heavy wooden table the Warriors surround, it’s the only thing betraying his agitation. Zeke’s illustrating the invasion plan with big swoops and curls of patriotic language, giving them all his best; _t_ _hey’re listening in, so play the good soldier face_. The result is something that borders on manic.

Porco’s not getting it though, mouthing off about the Tybers in a way that makes Reiner want to kick him under the table, you’d think he’d have learned to shut his mouth by now. Reiner cuts through his growing protestations with some appropriately nationalistic waffle, waxing lyrical about duty and the motherland; Zeke’s eyes flash at him in response with an unspoken approval.

That’s something he had to reacclimatise to when he came home, the political posturing that colours every phrase and the anxious patriotism that underpins the very fabric of Eldian society. Perhaps it’s better to say he’s had to adapt to Marley without actually believing in it anymore. After all, when he left, he was just a boy with his homeland shining in the back of his mind like a beacon, General Magath’s voice pounding in his head telling he was good, good, good. But then, he’d arrived on the Devil’s own island and found people in place of monsters and Reiner had felt the essential myth of Marleyan ideology slowly stretching, becoming thin and flimsy at the edges. Now, he’s got to go _back_ to that place.

He stares across at Pieck, splayed supine on the sofa in front of him, shifting her weight languidly. Unknowingly, her foot jostles against the ghost of Marcel, who’s been sitting there since the meeting began. Reiner’s been seeing him more, recently, Marco too. They drift along with him, never saying a word but staring in silent judgement.

When all of this is over, and Reiner descends into hell, it’ll be Marcel and Marco who push him down with soft, soft hands. Sometimes at night, if Reiner’s brain reaches a fever pitch, Marco will lie down beside him, and the bloody half of his head will soak the pillow a lurid red. He’ll reach up and place his hands gently on Reiner’s mouth, the same way Reiner had muffled his pleas for help all those years ago, and croak quietly to him with lips that can’t speak. 

Reiner refocuses, pulling his gaze back to the teacup; he’s clenching it so hard he’s almost cracked the handle. Paradis, paradise. There’s no way he can go back there, no way he can keep himself sane if he has to go behind those hulking walls again. Eren’s promise rings in the back of his skull like a funeral dirge: _I’ll make you suffer and die in the worst way possible_. He’ll be stronger than he was four years ago, and Reiner’s mind catches on imagining him as he would be now, a man grown. Absurdly, he wonders what it would be like to touch Eren’s face again, now they both know who the other really is.

“Any questions?” Zeke stares around the table and Reiner catches his eye in a show of composure, the dust motes dancing between them among shafts of sunlight. “Good.” With that, they’re released, and they file out into the hall. Porco drops into step with Pieck, who walks like a calf, her gait swaying lightly. Colt runs to catch up with them and the three fall into easy conversation, words flowing like eddying currents between them. Reiner, having nothing to add to the stream of conversation, hangs back with Marco and Marcel standing sentinel at his shoulder. He’s always felt like something of a hanger on but without Bert and Annie, or _anyone_ really who understands what exactly he’s been through, Reiner has no social function whatsoever in the Warrior corps. At this point he’s only a rickety veteran for the candidates to project their hopes onto.

The thought of Gabi becoming like him makes him want to break down there and then.

He remembers looking at her when he left Marley, a baby swaddled up in his aunt’s arms with cowlicks of brown curls framing her smile. Now, he sees his own face refracted through the past in the way Gabi holds herself, spouting vitriol against devils she’s never met.

“Deputy Chief Braun.” Magath’s rumbling bass interrupts his thoughts and he stands to attention. The general’s presence always makes his skin strain as he tries to make himself feel bigger in the presence of a man who makes him feel so incredibly small. Reiner can’t tell if he’s aged substantially, Magath’s face will always be frozen in his mind the way he knew him at eleven, with crows’ feet spreading in thin and spidery from his unreadable eyes. “Your performance in the field was subpar at best.”

Reiner gulps, “I’m sorry sir, I should’ve noticed the second train sooner.”

Magath’s eyes betray nothing. “Yes, you should have.”

Barely four words and it’s enough to shrink him back down into the little boy with the yellow armband, “I’ll do better, Sir.”

Magath’s eyes soften a little and his hand falls to Reiner’s shoulder. “I know you will, you’ve always known how to prove yourself to me.” The words are smooth and it’s all Reiner can do not to recoil as Magath releases his grasp. The man walks away, and Reiner has to push himself against the wall and breathe heavily because suddenly he’s a child, he’s a child and there’s the general above him with Marco and Marcel either side. He’s weak and he can’t stop the way that Magath will bend down and-

“You look like shit, Reiner.”

A cloud of cigarette smoke travels past his shoulder and breaks up his thoughts as Zeke comes out of his office, pulling the door closed with a solid click. His presence dissipates the growing shadows of his mind, pulling Marcel and Marco to dust. “Not hot shit, either. More like a cold, lonely turd.” Sunlight glints of the lenses of his glasses as he glances sidelong at him. It’s such a bizarre statement that Reiner snorts, despite himself.

“Thanks, Zeke.”

Zeke throws an arm around his shoulder and he stiffens. “You look like a man who could use a drink, preferably something hard. Are you an absinthe man, Reiner?” This conversation is headed into territory that definitively isn’t status quo.

“I don’t drink enough to have a penchant for anything.” Reiner tries to meet Zeke’s half lidded stare squarely.

“Now that’s a crying shame, you’re a man in your prime. You ever been to Rosie’s?”

He’s being pulled further out of his depth, “Rosie’s?”

“It’s a dive bar, back in the internment zone,” a small smile is forming on Zeke’s lips, “the kind of place where they’re not going to ask questions if two Warriors want to get absolutely shitfaced.”

Zeke’s cigarette is burning down to the filter and he tosses it out of the low window beside them carelessly. He’s thrown the gauntlet, it’s up to Reiner to pick it up, so, he puts his arm around Zeke with only the barest hint of uncertainty shading his show of camaraderie. “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

-

Reiner stares at Zeke over his mug of beer, they haven’t started on the hard spirits as promised but Zeke seems to have every intention of getting there as he slugs his drink down. Reiner’s more cautious, taking slow, measured sips and letting the hoppy flavour smooth over his tongue. It’s not often that he’s alone with the war chief like this, and these are more unlikely circumstances than most. He takes the opportunity to study Zeke’s face and notices he doesn’t look like his brother, really. His face is longer, eyes a little narrower with heavier lids. The sandy beard comes through thick and fast on Zeke’s face where hair remains scratchy and short on Eren. Then again, that was when his voice had barely broken. Who knows, maybe Eren’s got a full beard by now. Now there’s a thought to make him laugh.

Zeke wipes at the beer foam that sticks in his lips and hails over the barmaid, calling for copious shots of vile, clear liquid that could’ve sat anywhere between vodka, gin and rubbing alcohol. Reiner eyes it with distaste as Zeke shunts the glass over to him, fluid sloshing over the side. “Come on, Braun, where’s your sense of adventure? We’re colleagues having fun.”

Reiner quirks an eyebrow at him, “This is fun?”

Zeke holds one of the glasses between thumb and forefinger, moving as if to clink it against Reiner’s “Why, you got somewhere else to be?”

“Touché.” After a pause, Reiner clicks his glass against Zeke’s, downing his mug and several of the shots. They’re ghastly things that burn as they slide down his throat. He coughs and Zeke laughs with gusto at his spluttering.

“You weren’t joking when you said you don’t do this much, another?”

The world is beginning to buzz a little. “Another.”

They continue in this fashion for a time and Reiner’s limbs begin to feel languid and heavy, his thoughts twirling into a blessedly stupefied fog. In his alcoholic daze, he hasn’t noticed that Zeke stopped drinking about 3 rounds ago, watching him with an intensity he’d recognise from a pair of dirt green eyes he left back on Paradis.

“What do you think of the mission, Reiner?”

Reiner moans and swats a large fist somewhere that’s optimistically in Zeke’s direction. “Fuck’s sake Zeke, let’s not.”

Zeke holds his hands up in a show of placation. “Hey, it’s just between friends, no double speak intended.”

Reiner looks down at the glass of green liquid in front of him. Huh, so they had got to absinthe. He can’t remember how much he’s drunk.

“If I have to go back there, I’ll kill myself.” He states shortly. Zeke begins to laugh before he realises Reiner isn’t joking. For the first time he begins to look uncertain.

“Come on, Reiner…” Marco’s appeared, standing behind Zeke and gore slides from the curve of his mangled eye socket to the other man’s shoulder. It takes all of Reiner’s increasingly lax composure not to cry out.

“The things I saw there, the things I did…” Marco’s shape gets more vivid, and he puts his head in his hand, scrubbing at the patchy beard growing on his chin, “your brother promised to kill me.”

“I’m sure my brother promised a lot of things,” Zeke’s got his composure back and his eyes glint with some private joke, “but that’s no reason to sacrifice the life you’ve begin given.”

“I suppose not.” Reiner says flatly, not believing what he’s saying. Marco and Zeke begin to blur garishly in his drink smeared vision, both warped and unfocused.

“What was my brother like?” This snaps Reiner up and he stares towards Zeke, the war chief takes the beat of silence that passes between them for reluctance, “Humour me, I’ve only met him once, looked like an angry little shit.” Reiner’s thoughts eddy and swirl towards Eren, memories of his angry polemics and wild eyes slide and burn across his brain like the alcohol in his stomach.

“He was kind.” Reiner bites out shortly.

Zeke blinks, “Kind?” The vision of Marco is receding, and Zeke’s shape becomes more solid as he focuses on Eren.

“Yes. He was kind and impulsive and about the most obstinate person I’ve ever met,” Reiner laughs a little bitterly here, coming back into himself, “Eren’s about the most loyal person I’ve ever come across. Would’ve laid down and died for his friends, had it come down to it.” He knocks back more absinthe, which is undoubtedly a bad idea. “He would have died for me, once upon a time.” Zeke looks taken aback by this sudden deluge of information, after all, it’s the most he’s said all night. But Reiner blurts on because he couldn’t stop now even if he tried, “he was so angry at the world it was almost terrifying, but it was because he cared so much. I think his heart was so full it was fit to burst.” Reiner looks away, in case he betrays too much, he can’t stand he thought of Zeke knowing this much about him but it’s probably too late for that, the cards have all fallen from his sleeve.

His eyes rove over the grime of the bar in an effort not to catch Zeke’s eyes and the other man seems to understand his need for silence. He hasn’t really been paying attention to the clientele but the patrons that slide through his inebriated vision are the sort you’d expect in a place like this, solitary drinkers with their hats pulled down low. Reiner’s eyes catch on a pair drinking in the corner, a man and a woman. They gaze out from the booth they’re sitting in, scanning the crowd with interest. The woman has a sort of unpolished elegance, her well-worn heel tapping the floor with impatience. The boy looks a little younger, perhaps just shy of Reiner’s age. His posture is half defiant, half shy; it’s arrogance touched with something a little embarrassed. He looks exactly like Eren.

Zeke follows his gaze and grins, reaching across the table and clasping at his wrist in a way that focuses Reiner’s muddied thoughts. “Have you got any money on you?” Reiner blinks, slow with drink and confusion.

“Yes, why?”

The corner of Zeke’s eyes crinkle further and he smiles like a chimp, “Because, my lucky young friend, your oh so discerning eye has caught on the best prostitute in Liberio.” Reiner’s eyes flare a little wide, pulling his wrist back in shock and this seems to please Zeke no end. “Don’t blush on me now Reiner, you’re not a virgin, are you?” This pulls an acerbic little laugh from the back of Reiner’s throat because he’s not been a virgin for a long, long time.

Zeke takes this as confirmation and he’s tugging Reiner up and towards their table, beer-stained breath catching on the conch of his ear, “I’ll take her, if it’s alright with you but I sense your inclinations don’t lie with the fairer sex.” and before Reiner knows it, they’re already there. The woman is gazing up through her lashes at them, pleased.

“Zeke, what a wonderful surprise.”

Zeke reaches down and he kisses her hand in mock grace, “Anya, my gem.” They clearly know each other well and Anya’s laugh rings in Reiner’s ear, high and fluting. She flicks her eyes towards Reiner as Zeke kisses up her arms, gaze calculating.

“Who’s your friend?” Zeke lets her arm go and slides in easily beside her.

“A work friend, who’s yours?” the war chief nods to the young man opposite Anya, who looks about as awkward as Reiner feels.

“The same,” she gestures at Reiner with her glass, “sit down then, Work Friend.” Unsure of what else to do, he follows her command, settling without grace into the booth. Anya raises an eyebrow, “He’s whacked, how much has he had to drink?”

“The same as me but I’m afraid the great Warrior Braun is something of a lightweight.” Anya gives another crisp little laugh and Reiner chuckles along a little dopily, there probably is something rather ridiculous about a man of his stature as drunk as someone half his size. But Zeke has begun to pull on Anya’s neck again, kissing at the pale skin there and Reiner is forced to turn to Eren’s doppelgänger.

Christ, he’s beautiful.

There’s the same light slope to his nose and bushiness to his brows, framing an antagonistic, thick lashed gaze. When Reiner sticks his hand out, it’s sweaty, “Hi.” The man’s lips quirk somewhere between sympathy and laughter as if it’s painfully apparent that Reiner has absolutely no idea how to approach this.

“Hi.” He deigns to give a smile but doesn’t take his hand and Reiner snaps his arm down, embarrassed. The man shuffles a little closer at this, having the grace to look a little admonished, “I’m Elias.” He flicks his gaze up through his lashes in a practiced fashion and Reiner recognises the motion with a cold flush, he was probably learning how to stare like that when Elias was still running around the schoolyard. He promptly shuts the thought down and leans forward to compensate.

“I’m Reiner.”

Elias is pushing a hand lightly up onto his thigh, fingers the same sandy brown as Eren’s, “I know, you’re the famous Captain Braun, right?”

“Deputy Chief.” Reiner counters, without thinking. He’s really no good at this.

Elias stills his hand, a touch unimpressed, but to his credit he soldiers on with the script “Of course, how could I forget the title of someone like you.” The sarcasm is barely restrained, and this makes Reiner feel a little more at ease, it makes the situation just a shade less contrived.

“Well, I’m glad that someone like you could remember.” he replies, disarming Elias with blunt honesty. His eyes widen a fraction, with a gaze so green it makes Reiner ache. The eyes aren’t quite the right colour, a soft mossy green where Eren’s are flintier, but they’ll do and Reiner reaches up to cup his face, pretending it’s an apology to someone who isn’t there. Elias leans into the touch, cheek brushing the pads of Reiner’s finger and he’s seventeen again, looking down at a boy who thinks he’s hung the moon. So, it’s no surprise when he whispers the wrong name.

“Your friend is leaving.” Elais says softly, unphased. He looks forward and sure enough Zeke is tugging Anya toward the bar door, Reiner evidently forgotten amongst the promise of her fingers dancing up his arm. “Are we joining them?” Reiner feels confused for a split second because if he’s suggesting that they could join Anya and _Zeke_ , Elias laughs at Reiner’s scandalised expression and his woeful inexperience is highlighted once more. “Not like that, I’d charge more anyway,” he pulls Reiner up gently by the wrist, “But we do need to leave here if we’re going to get anything done.”

Reiner stands up and the alcohol rushes to his head, following Elias transfixed. If he softens his gaze just the right amount then it’s like Eren’s tugging him along, smile blurry and sweet. They push out into the cold of the night and something animalistic takes hold of him, as he pushes Elias impulsively against the cold stone wall. He hasn’t kissed anyone in a long time, but he pushes his hands through the thick strands of brown hair and presses his lips with a fervour, the other arm moving to clutch at the white armband on Elias’ coat. With every slide of his lips his head is pounding _Eren, Eren, Eren_ and when he pulls away, there’s a line of spit connecting them that snaps tremulously in the wind. 

Elias is breathing heavily and he pushes at Reiner lightly, but there’s intention behind it, “If you wanna do that again, you gotta pay.”

“How much?” Reiner’s voice is hoarse as he slips his hand into his coat, palming his wallet.

“How much you got?” The arrogant little smile that colours his face is so infuriatingly similar to Eren that Reiner wonders if he’s somehow collected a new ghost. He produces a thick wadge of notes and slides them into the pocket of Elias’ trousers, bringing his lips to the shell of the other man’s ear.

“Will that do?”

Elias meets his gaze and grins wider, flicking his eyes down to Reiner’s lips, “My place or yours?”

Reiner pulls back, scrubbing a hand through the bristly blonde hair at the back of his head, “Not my place, my Mama-”

Elias cuts him off with a laugh, none to kindly, and pushes off the wall. “Come on then soldier boy,” he turns back to grin again, but he just looks impossibly sad, “let me take you to wonderland.”

-

They fuck without ceremony, after folding their clothes and placing them neatly on a chair in the corner of the sparse apartment. Reiner feels comically big against Elias, sweat sliding down the bridge of his nose to land on the red flush of his chest. Elias is smooth where Eren’s skin would be ridged and pliant where Eren would bite. It’s close enough, though, and when Reiner buries his head in the crook of Elias’ neck and pants Eren’s name, over and over, the other man doesn’t shake him away. It had taken him a while to get hard, the alcohol making his body slow to respond but he’d bent under ministering hands, body orchestrated to a fever pitch. His mind is blurred enough to make him believe he’s in love and that it’s Eren scratching nails up his back, sighing and holding him impossibly close. It’s just so _good_ to pretend he’s with Eren like this, wrapped around him and pulling soft whines from his throat. Reiner looks up from where he’s biting a thick purple bruise on Elias’ clavicle and moves to twist the other man on top of him. A confession punches its way out of his chest between gasps; it’s a heavy, trembling, pathetic little thing, “I’m sorry, Eren. I’m so, so sorry.”

Elias shifts, gazing down with parted lips and lifts his body to move sharply downwards against him, raking a hand through Reiner’s sweat-beaded hair and pulls his head back to whisper softy, “I forgive you.”

Reiner hits his release with grunt, the force of it wiping his vision.

Elias rolls off him, skin sticky, and they both pant in the silence as their breaths echo and fill the space. Reiner stares at his coat dangling by the door, hanging like a dead man weeping red at the armband. Fishing at the carton on the table next to him, Elias pulls out a cigarette and flicks a sputtering lighter to life, the glow of it illuminates his face in long, golden planes against the blue light of the night gleaming from the window. He proffers the carton to Reiner, who shakes a hand at him, “I don’t smoke.”

Elias snorts, but without any of his prior bitterness, “Right, I guess you gotta keep those warrior lungs nice and healthy.” He slaps softly against Reiner’s chest and Reiner captures his hand, pretending he has Eren’s long, pianist’s fingers.

“Nah it’s not that, my lungs would heal any damage. But my mama smokes. Fucked her lungs up real bad.”

“You’re such a mama’s boy, you know that?” Elias says, giving him a sidelong look and blowing a cloud of smoke out into the dim air.

Reiner snorts, “I used to be when I was a kid, couldn’t go five minutes without wanting to hold her hand but when I grew up…” he thinks of Karina, swearing death to the devils of Paradis, “we’re different people now. I still love her though, it’s just changed now, I think. We understand each other less.”

“She make you wanna give your life up like this?” This startles Reiner and he stares down at Elias, lethargic on the bed and he’s looking at him with an arresting pity.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve read the papers; they’re looking for a replacement – how long do you have left? Three years? Five?”

Reiner looks away. “Two.”

“Shit.” Elias exhales, pushing himself up to sit closer next to Reiner. Something about the exchange is uncomfortable, it feels like the situation is bleeding over its bounds, exceeding the arrangement.

“Don’t pity me, I chose this.” Reiner pulls himself back gruffly.

“I don’t think this is the kind of decision you can expect a ten-year-old to make.” Elias says gently.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re annoyingly perceptive?”

“What, because I’m a sex worker I’m meant to have nothing in between my ears?”

Reiner frowns, “I never said that.”

The hackles lower and Elias sighs, “I know, just used to getting shit for it, is all.” Silence flows between them again, until - “You ever fucked a guy before?”

A beat passes. “What?”

Sensing he’s steered the dynamic off course, Elias attempts to salvage the statement, “You seemed nervous, is all.”

Reiner’s reply is quiet, “Yes I have, a long time ago.” And he remembers a thumb rubbing against his bottom lip as Magath tells him to be quiet. He remembers coming out of the general’s office, confused and hollow. He remembers realising what was done to him, slowly on Paradis, and knowing he could never tell Bert or Annie what had happened to him. Sometimes, he thinks about what Marcel said about influencing the decision on the Armoured Titan’s inheritance and wonders if he had been in Reiner’s position too. Elias looks at Reiner with an unspoken knowledge and he realises that _oh_ , he gets it and when he holds his gaze, it’s the first time he doesn’t wish Elias was Eren.

Which means it’s time to leave.

His mind is beginning to darken again, silhouettes of his ghosts dancing between the first hints of dawn that colour the sky. As he rolls out of bed and pulls his slacks back on, Reiner can see the light catch the auburn glint of Marcel’s hair. Elias doesn’t say anything or move to stop him as Reiner pulls on his coat without speaking, he just looks on with a grief beyond his years. When Reiner opens the door and turns to look back at the light from the hall illuminating him through the swirls of cigarette smoke, he knows instinctively that he’ll never see Elias again.

-

Reiner vomits when he leaves the building, alcohol and bad memories sliding up his throat to splatter onto the wall. Blearily, Reiner feels bad that it’s so close to the apartment block, but the bile has been rising in his throat since he’d shut the door. Marcel rubs his back and Marco takes his hand, leading him down the narrow ribbons of streets that are beginning to become soft with the light of dawn, causing Marco’s wounds to glow ruddy as the light glances off the viscera. They’re so kind, he killed them and they’re still so kind. _Keep moving forward,_ that’s what he told Eren all those years ago, to march on and on and on until you can walk no more. But he knows now, as Marcel puts a hand on his shoulder and lightly guides him down the stairs of the Warrior’s armoury, that he’s all used up. His feet will walk no more.

It’s Marco who hands him the rifle and Reiner takes the stock gratefully. There’s a calm in him, now that he’s given up so thoroughly. Gabi will be safe, and his mother will grieve, if only for a little while. A child will be born with his memories, but they won’t know what any of it means for many years. This is right. This is good. Reiner knows what’s for the best, now.

He puts his mouth around the barrel and sits in a chair, staring up into the calm gazes of Marco and Marcel. They regard him with a serene judgement, this is the punishment that fits the crime. His hooks his finger through the guard and around the trigger, ready to squeeze when Eren comes into his mind, unbidden. A boy of fourteen staring up at Reiner with bright, bright eyes full of trust. With an absurd flash, he realises that he’ll never get to kiss Eren, now.

“Damn it!” There’s a thump on the wall and Falco’s voice cuts up through the window grate sharply, “I’ve got to change something.”

Pulling the rifle from his mouth in a daze, Reiner retches, dropping the spit slicked barrel to the floor. His breath is coming through fast and heavy but that’s right, isn’t it? He deserves to be here, he must live for _them_ , protect _them_. For Falco, Zofia, Udo and Gabi, they deserve something of a childhood he never got, and he can try and give that to them, in any way he can.

Quietly, but with certainty, Reiner decides to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if writing a sex scene whilst listening to Lacrimosa is a new high or a new low.


End file.
